Thought that the fact that you hadn't heard Tom DeLay's name in a while indicated that he was no longer under scrutiny for his improprieties? Think again.

A federal grand jury has subpoenaed payroll records from the House for Ed Buckham, former chief of staff to ex-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).

The subpoena, issued by a grand jury in Washington, D.C., is the first formal notification that Buckham is the focus of a federal corruption probe by the Justice Department. The subpoena was sent to Daniel Beard, chief administrative officer for the House, and formally read into the Congressional Record this afternoon, although Buckham was not mentioned in the official notification.

Buckham served as DeLay's chief of staff before leaving to become a lobbyist. He had extensive dealings with now imprisoned GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and a former buiness associate Tony Rudy - also a former DeLay aide - has already pleaded guilty to accepting payments from Abramoff's clients while working for DeLay. The gifts, including payments to Rudy's wife, were in exchange for helping Abramoff and his clients with legislative matters, according to Rudy's plea agreement with DOJ.

Rudy also pleaded guilty to violating the one-year ban for former senior aides to approach their former bosses as lobbyists. It is unclear if the Justice Department is pursuing the same allegation against Buckham. Neil Volz, ex-chief of staff to imprisoned former Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), pleaded guilty to same charge as well.

Buckham, an ordained minister, remained very close to DeLay after he left the Texas Republican's staff, advising DeLay on numerous political and legislative matters.

In recent months, a number of ex-DeLay staffers have been subpoenaed - or voluntarily came in for questioning - by the Justice Dept. to discuss the day-to-day operations of DeLay's office, including the role Buckham played once he left DeLay's staff, according to several sources familiar with the investigation.

News like this -- along with news like the Ted Stevens sting and the apparent retirement of Jerry Weller due to ethical concerns -- underscore the reality that the Republican Party still has a long way to go before it cleans up its act. While Republicans up on Capitol Hill spend their time complaining about things like earmarks, the fact is that whatever problems there are with pork are symptoms rather than causes of the problems. Marc Ambinder yesterday quite aptly called it "the pay-to-play nexus of corporate lobbyists" within the Republican Party.

Clearly the broader trends -- recruitment and fundraising and the like -- point to a real advantage for the Democrats in the race for control of Congress in 2008. But the fact that the Republican Party has not been successful whatsoever at ridding itself of the institutional corruption within its midst ("the pay-to-play nexus of corporate lobbyists," as it were) -- heck it's not even clear that it has tried to do so at all -- is going to make it especially difficult for it to pull out a win next fall.